Discussion relating to Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Philadelphia Metro Area). Official web site can be found here: www.septa.com. Also including discussion related to the PATCO Speedline rapid transit operated by Delaware River Port Authority. Official web site can be found here: http://www.ridepatco.org/.

If Trump's proposed "Skinny Budget" passes the house, and gains momentum in the Senate, it could be the death toll for expansion to Wawa.

That expansion project and (others proposed by SEPTA and DVRPC) receive half of the capital budget money from federal programs like TIGER and New Starts from DOT appropriations funding.

Without the federal money to cover half the capital costs, expansion projects are a pipe dream, which is ashame, because with ACT 89, SEPTA was poised to cover the other half of capital building projects with the new gasoline tax revenues collected in Harrisburg.

So that leaves me wondering, what happened to all the election campaign promises to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure to make America great again?

1. Last I heard, the track between Glen Riddle and Elwyn is excepted track. Meaning NO PASSENGERS. That is why we haven't seen a WCRR passenger excursion train to 30th Street in a while. Passenger service was abandoned in 1986 because the line needed maintenance. Minimal maintenance has been done in the past 30 years to the point that the entire railbed probably needs to be reconstructed, along with some bridges. Add to that installing or updating the signal system to PTC, and you have a very capital intensive process.

2. The planned Wawa station is a new structure. I know nothing about the old Wawa station, but it most likely does not meet the needs of the 2017 commuter.

The roadbed has been rebuilt and new retaining walls installed where the line runs along Chester Creek. What needs to be done at this point is install the signal system, build the new layup yard at Lenni, rehang the catenary, and build the station and parking garage at Wawa. Not exactly roll a train, pick people up. They give a 4 year timeline starting in 2018 and given the to do list I just laid out, that's a pretty reasonable timeframe.

So it appears the gold plated answer isn't attainable. Maybe the layup yard and parking garage need to be shelved and build a modest station, hang wire, plant some PTC in the ground and they'll be good to go.

As far as reasonable timelines are concerned, SEPTA has been promising trains would be rolling in a few years for the past 18 years.

Clearly not since this is supposed to be a drive up, park and ride type station. Also shelving the layup yard isn't too bright either with the fleet growing while the extension is being built. SEPTA is already hurting for storage space to store trains as it is and with extra and longer trains the Sprinters and multilevels are going to bring, that's going to be that much less space for SEPTA to store trains.

bikentransit wrote:So it appears the gold plated answer isn't attainable. Maybe the layup yard and parking garage need to be shelved and build a modest station, hang wire, plant some PTC in the ground and they'll be good to go.

As far as reasonable timelines are concerned, SEPTA has been promising trains would be rolling in a few years for the past 18 years.

"It's better to whole-ass one thing than half-ass two things."--Ron Swanson

Because the wire, track, and PTC are fixed costs you're talking about spending a significant fraction of the existing budget while only getting a small fraction of the passengers. My napkin math says that the station and parking deck are at least 1/3 of the total project budget but it bumps the extensions passenger handling capacity a least %800 from 100 to 800+.

As far as I can tell it's already started. If you go to the road near the Lenni station site you can see they've installed new catenary pylons. I think construction on the actual station itself starts but next year.

Yes I was back there not that long ago and they have new pylons up and also they took the lights off the crossing signals on Lenni Rd. Question I have been wondering is and if ever will Amtrak run Ballast back to Glen Mills? I know it is MOW time of year and I just remembered Glen Mills used to get trains a couple of years ago.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:If PA had a driven, focused Governor (read: Cuomo), quite some of these proposals mentioned could have been fulfilled or underway by now.

Cuomo? Let that cup pass from us. His main talent is putting out extensive press releases in which other people's work is credited to him. New York MTA is not in any better shape than SEPTA is. Tom Wolf is a great Governor, but the PA legislature is an awful place where good ideas go to die. Restoring Act 89 to its full funding power by preventing the State Police from raiding the money would be a good first step for funding worthy capital projects like West Chester.